‘Roseanne’ Showed Us How Toxic Masculinity Plays Out In Women

Since news broke that a reboot of Roseanne was in the works, people have been wondering just how different the most liberal sitcom of the ’90s will be now that its creator/star has swung pretty far right on the political pendulum. The worst case scenario for the reboot would be the show ditches the progressive platform that made it so successful in the ’90s for something more Trumpian, but even if that happens, we’ll always have the first nine seasons that fearlessly criticized our culture and railed against things like toxic masculinity long before we’d even come up with such a fancypants term to describe our society’s gendered code of conduct.

Like only she can, Roseanne —which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime— managed to take even this issue a step further than anyone else, including shows on TV now, by letting us see the many ways toxic masculinity plays out in women, too. Much like me, Roseanne’s daughter Darlene (as portrayed by Sara Gilbert) was a tomboy who couldn’t relate to the strict gendered code of feminine conduct and, therefore, turned her back on all things feminine or touchy-feely out of desperation. And necessity.

In other words, what Roseanne gifted us was with was TV’s first misogynistic feminist. I know this because I was one, too. Thank God someone was talking about it.

Photo: Everett Collection

Darlene didn’t want to follow the toxic feminine playbook—one that fetishizes infantile women who are cutie-pie, adorkable idiots singularly obsessed with being fuckable and making men comfortable at all costs instead of smart, confident, slutty badasses who won’t define themselves by what men want them to be. Through this character and several others (Hello, Mark!), Roseanne consistently called out a culture that forces both men and women to choose between two unhealthy toxic extremes—femininity or masculinity.

We see this most clearly in the contrast between Darlene and her older sister, Becky. Despite being feminists, both Becky and Roseanne reinforce and project patriarchal norms onto Darlene without meaning to or even realizing it. For example, when Darlene tries on dresses for a school dance in the Season 3 episode “Dances With Darlene,” she ends up having to call out Roseanne for being overly excited about a stupid boy asking her to a dance instead of the things Darlene actually cares about, like baseball. Roseanne had never once bragged about Darlene striking out a batter but all of a sudden acts like a pig in shit over this dance nonsense. Roseanne hadn’t even attended Darlene’s games until she brought this to her attention. She promised to do so at the end of the episode.

Becky was even worse though, telling Darlene she’s gotta dumb herself down if she wants to get the guy (“The vulnerable helpless girl approach would be better than this Larry Bird thing”). It’s no surprise Darlene finally says a big fuck you to all of it and, consequently, goes to the other extreme, spending several seasons of her angsty teenage years trying to squash out every last bit of femininity within herself out of fear of being forced to be someone she’s not.

Roseanne has said in past interviews that Darlene is the hero of the show, for she mirrors Roseanne’s adolescent self. Perhaps this is why the show understood the biggest challenge of being a tomboy—the development of childbearing hips and boobies and how they throw us tomboys into a serious existential crisis. Because that’s when everyone starts being all weird to us. Fathers get uncomfortable, old men (like even men our grandpa’s ages) start looking at us like juicy steaks, and our guy friends all of a sudden want to finger us instead of fart on our faces. This is when Darlene falls into a dark period, pulling away from everyone, dressing in frumpy, morbid clothes, and morphing into this emotionally guarded smart ass who avoids intimacy by isolating in her room and deflecting with jokes.

One of the most moving episodes of her ongoing internal conflict is when Darlene gets her period (“Nightmare On Oak Street,” Season 1, Episode 15) and officially becomes a woman. Her Aunt Jackie, a truck driver afraid of commitment and basically a hornier, grown up version of Darlene (and my personal spirit animal), says “the change” devastated her, too. Because it ended the days when she could horseplay with the boys.

How true it is. Once the boys start talking about banging chicks all the time, tomboys like us can’t fit in with the girls or the boys anymore. It’s devastating.

But the worst part of “flow coming to town” is the wedge it now drives between Darlene and Dan. Since he’d always treated Darlene more like a son than his actual son, his sudden awkwardness crushes her. Roseanne realizes just how hard this transition to womanhood is for Darlene when she catches her throwing away all her sports gear. She tries talking some sense into her (“As long as a girl uses them, these are girls’ things too ya know”). But Darlene’s afraid getting her period means she now has to shave her legs and wear pantyhose like that sissy, Becky. Roseanne assures her Becky does that stuff because that’s the kind of woman she’s always been and wants to be. But as much as Darlene wants to believe Roseanne, she intuitively knows society won’t be cool with her doing manly things now that she’s got full functioning baby-making parts and is considered fuckable.

And she’s right.

Over the next several seasons we see how destructive this internal tomboy conflict truly is. How Darlene starts to associates anything and everything feminine with weakness and submission, whether it be painting one’s nails or pining over a boy. The one time Darlene catches herself squealing over a guy calling, she immediately polices herself. “Oh God, I just became the kind of girl I hate.” I still do this to myself at the age of 39. Because it never gets easy trying to be treated like one of the guys while also wanting to be pounded by them. Toxic masculinity demands that men swallow their feelings and remain chill at all times (unless it’s time to punch or shoot someone), so to show any emotion whatsoever is to show cowardice.

The one time Darlene does open up, it’s through a poem she’s forced to read in front of a crowd of parents (“Brain Dead Poets’ Society,” Season 2 Episode 10). For about 30 seconds we got to see the real Darlene. It leaves both Roseanne and Jackie in tears.

But that’s all we get. After that, Darlene slams the window to her soul shut and spends nearly a whole season holed up in her room, wearing black, and scaring the shit out of her confused parents. Hell, the girl seems almost suicidal at times and it’s painful to watch. But I get it. I did the same thing. Only I turned to drugs instead of books to deal.

What finally pulls her out of this self-inflicted isolation is her friendship with David, a boy who is literally the yin to her yang. An artsy, sensitive dude who’s as opposite of Becky’s macho boyfriend, Mark, as they come. Over time, this friendship-turned-relationship finally opens Darlene up to her feminine side. But she still threatens to beat him up on a regular basis and puts up a fight the whole way.

Their first fight is over David trying to hold her hand in public and spend more time with her in general (“Deliverance,” Season 4, Episode 22). Like me, Darlene’s the one who’s afraid a partner will threaten her autonomy and tie her down. But we’re told women are the ones who crave commitment and will even manipulate or trap men with babies in order to get it. But this just isn’t so. As a woman whose biggest fear is a relationship taking away my freedom, I was just like Darlene. Over time, David pushes her to open up to him, though she drags her feet doing so. Eventually she, like me, realizes that relationships are great and being vulnerable isn’t actually for pussies. In fact, it takes a lot of courage to let down your tough chick façade.

Over the course of nine seasons, Darlene finds a healthy center between these two extremes. Like myself, she never embraces makeup or heels or anything that goes against her genuine nature. But through years of isolation and depression, she finally realizes that toxic masculinity doesn’t suit her well. Or anyone really. Because it turns both men and women into lone wolves who can’t relate to anyone. I was worse than Darlene. I didn’t let myself fall in love until age 36.

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While I’ll always dress like a boy and continue to drive a big ole truck, I can be caught wearing chapstick and earrings on special occasions, too.

If it hadn’t been for Roseanne, I may have spent my adolescents feeling like a freak and wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Instead, I felt understood. Regardless of its star’s current political leanings, let’s just hope the Roseanne reboot will continue to use storytelling to reach people who don’t have a voice in mainstream media. Surely loneliness is a bipartisan issue, too.

Melanie Hamlett is a writer, storyteller, comedian, and public speaker based out of LA. She’s also regular on the Risk! podcast, created Smashing Stories, and performs regularly when she’s not sleeping in the back of her truck in the woods or living abroad.

Melanie Hamlett is a writer, storyteller, comedian, and public speaker based out of LA. She’s also regular on the Risk! podcast, created Smashing Stories, and performs regularly when she’s not sleeping in the back of her truck in the woods or living abroad.